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New Laptop Setup: Stickers

As I mentioned before, I underwent a hardware refresh and set up a laptop. However, I failed to mention the most important consideration: laptops come with blank canvases waiting for stickers. So let’s dive into what it means to have an empty laptop lid and a drawer full of stickers.

On :bwinton’s recommendation I acquired a blank Gelaskin. This will in the future allow me to remove and retain all of the stickers when I retire the laptop, or when I just decide to start afresh.

I was surprised twice by the ‘skin. Firstly, I was expecting it to be clear. Luckily, a white top on the black laptop makes a strong statement that I like so I’m a little glad. Also a surprise: the curved edges. There is a very clear type of laptop this is for (macbooks) and mine is not of that type. These were just minor things. A little trimming of the long edge later, and I was in business.

With the canvas thus prepared the question became how to fill it. I imagine there are as many schools of thought in this as there are people with laptops, but this is my approach when I have a blank laptop and quite a few stickers stockpiled:

I’m loathe to add anything with dates on it that I didn’t bring this laptop to. This means no All Hands stickers (until December), and no conferences.

I’m also not planning on layering them over each other too much. Corners can overlap, but aside from censoring the top-right sticker’s profanity (about which I am unduly proud) I want to let them speak for themselves in their entirety.

I left some significant space. Not because I know how to use negative space (I mean, look at it) but because I expect to greatly increase my supply of stickers that need applying in the near term and I’ll need the room to grow.

It makes for an imbalanced, unjustified, off-centre melange of stickers that I just have to make my peace with. I will never not see the fractional radians the Berlin sticker is off. No one will fail to notice the millimetres from true the Mozilla sticker in the “middle” is. I didn’t use a ruler, and now they are applied there is no way to change them. So sticker application at some point becomes an intersection between accepting one’s fallibility and learning to accept the results of permanent actions.

And it is also an exercise in impermanence. The top-left is the last of my “Telemetry From Outer Space” rectangles. I could (and probably will) print more, but I will change the wording, and the colouration will be slightly different. This is the last of that cohort, never again to exist unstuck.

But enough philosophizing. Stickers! They’re great.

If you want to make some to bring to an event in the near future, I have a guide you may find useful.